Promoting Collaborative Learning

The inability to provide a continuous talent pipeline to meet industry requirements is forcing companies to move jobs out of India

By VSN RAJU

The privatisation of education in India a decade ago was welcomed as it was aimed at enhancing the size and availability of skilled talent pool that India Inc could showcase to establish India as the most preferred destination for business and trade in the globalisation and IT & ITeS boom phases. According to the University Grants Commission (UGC), India has added nearly 20,000 colleges in a decade that had increased from 12,806 in 2000-01 to 33,023 in 2010-11 which translates into an over 150 percent growth. The number of degree-granting universities more than doubled from 256 to 564, primarily due to deemed and private universities. This growth in the education space has had a positive impact on the Indian economy not only by bringing in the much needed foreign investments, but also by generating diverse and progressive employment opportunities for the graduating youth of our country.

But lately, this growth is losing its sheen as colleges are struggling to overcome challenges like scarcity of competent teachers, rising infrastructure costs and the growing discord between the industry and academia; which is forcing them to adapt to unscientific and lowcost means for imparting education to students, thus affecting the quality of the talent pool. The inability to provide a continuous talent pipeline to meet industry requirements is forcing companies to move jobs out of India.

Empowering the colleges with best practices in teaching-learning and facilitating active collaboration at all levels, be it fellow-students, fellow-institutions, industry experts and leading academicians, will address the challenges faced by colleges to a great extent.

Established in the year 2000, Globarena Technologies is an education service provider and has been providing scientific and technology-enabled teaching and learning solutions. For the past 13 years, our teaching, learning and assessment solutions have benefitted many institutions, universities and government education departments in their skill development and capacity building efforts. All our solutions are technology-enabled and are designed to suit the changing teaching-learning processes and impact a wide spectrum of colleges operating in the urban, semi-rural and rural regions of India.

Our solutions have evolved from just being PC-compatible to being a scalable 24*7 or 365-days accessible solutions compatible with the latest gizmo’s and come with a multi-mode delivery possibility. The analytics incorporated to our solution in the form of usage statistics, and validated assessment (pre-during-post) gives a 360-degree feedback to teacher and learners in their respective endeavours.

Globarena Technologies, in consultation with universities, industry bodies and renowned academicians from across India, has recently rolled-out the Centre of Excellence (CoE) solution and OnMark – Examination Management Solution which has been tested in realtime environments with encouraging results that have been endorsed and accepted by all consulting parties as very helpful solutions to empower colleges/ universities to overcome the present day challenges they face in teaching, learning and assessments.

CoE follows the Teacher-Learner Delivery Mode (TLDM) that enables colleges practice collaborative teaching-learning using two-way HD virtual classroom with an option to record and archive lectures, e-Resources for teachers and students (both on LAN and/or online) in line with the university curriculum and knowledge management tools to impart education; the framework of CoE enables colleges/universities to run Industry Strength Programmes (ISP) to prepare the students on the industry required competencies while at college.

The OnMark – Examination Management Solution addresses the challenges that universities face to ensure transparent and error-free examination conduction, answer-script scanning, on-screen evaluation and preservation of answerscript. It has been designed with our experience of conducting assessments for national industry bodies like NASSCOM and online examinations for over eight state universities and comes with built-in student, colleges and university modules.

Globarena Technologies, in its 13th year of operation in the education services space, wishes to be a change agent and redefine the way the universities look at teaching, learning and assessment during knowledge dissemination and evaluation. To expedite our efforts to reach out to universities, institutions and government, we have successfully delivered many pilots in live environments involving government education departments and universities which have been well received and appreciated by all. We are hopeful that our solutions will enable Indian universities to promote collaborative learning and conduct transparent and error-free examinations. (The author is CEO of Globarena Technologies, Hyderabad)

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The digitalLEARNING is Asia and Middle East’s premier monthly magazine on innovations in education, focussing on Information & Communication Technology’s (ICT) role in it. Published since 2005 in print and online formats, the monthly magazine raises awareness about how ICT is enhancing the scope and quality of education. Over the years, the Magazine has earned an unmatchable recognition for itself, offering a 360 degree perspective of the education landscape while touching almost all segments and industry stakeholders.